Press Kit - Memento Films International

SHAHADA
A film by Burhan Qurbani
BERLIN, SECOND GENERATION

CAST
Maryam /// Maryam Zaree
Sammi /// Jeremias Acheampong
Ismail /// Carlo Ljubek
Leyla /// Marija Škaricic
Daniel /// Sergej Moya
Vedat /// Vedat Erincin
Sarah /// Anne Ratte-Polle
Renan /// Nora Abdel-Maksoud
Sinan /// Burak Yigit
Amira // Yollette Thomas
Kinay /// Alexandros (Alexi) Gehrckens
Rainer /// Gerdy Zint
CREW
Writer, Director /// Burhan Qurbani
Co-writer /// Ole Giec
Produced by /// Susa Kusche, Uwe Spiller,
Robert Gold (bittersuess pictures)
Producer /// Leif Alexis
Co-Producers /// ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel (Burkhard Althoff)
Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Nico Hofmann)
In association with /// Hessen Invest
Cinematographer /// Yoshi Heimrath
Editor /// Simon Blasi
Composer /// Daniel Sus
Set Designer /// Barbara Falkner
Costume Designer /// Irene Ip
Make-up Artist /// Anja Heinemann, Sandra Meyer
Sound Designer /// Jörg Theil
Mixer /// k13
Credits Design /// weareflink
Casting Director /// Karen Wendland
Line Producer /// Christine Günther
Post-Production /// PICTORION das werk Gmbh
PRODUCTION CONTACTS
BITTERSUESS PICTURES
Zionskirchstr. 73
10119 Berlin - Germany
Tel.: 49 30 285 376 600
Fax: 49 30 285 376 633
info@bittersuesspictures.de
WORLD SALES AND FESTIVALS
MEMENTO FILMS INTERNATIONAL
9 Cité Paradis - 75010 Paris - France
Tel.: +33 1 53 34 90 20
sales@memento-films.com
festival@memento-films.com
www.memento-films.com
INTERNATIONAL PRESS IN BERLIN
ALIBI COMMUNICATIONS
Brigitta Portier
Raymond Lauwersstraat 37 a
1560 Hoeilaart - Belgium
Tel.: +32 477 98 25 84
alibi-com@skynet.be
SHAHADA
A film by Burhan Qurbani
90 minutes - Color - German, Turkish - Germany
RED ONE blowup to 35mm - Cinemascope 1:2,35 - Dolby 5.1.

SYNOPSIS
Berlin, today.
During a razzia for clandestine employees in a
warehouse, the fates of three young German-born
Muslims collide.
Ismail, a police officer of Turkish descent, is about to
break his loyalty towards his badge and his wife as he
finds himself attracted to illegal immigrant Leyla.
Sammi is torn between his Muslim faith and his
irresistible desire for one of his male co-workers, despite
his friends’ violent homophobia. He is appeased by
the local Imam, a liberal religious leader revered by the
community, who is going through a crisis of his own: his
daughter, Maryam, is moving into an ultraconservative
direction although she has been raised so tolerantly.
The three of them must find their place between faith
and modern life in a contemporary Western society,
between the luring liberated lifestyle and tradition.

BURHAN QURBANI ON SHAHADA
A LITTLE PRAYER ON THE WAY
An image from my childhood – one still vivid in my mind:
I am about 10 years old. We live with my grandfather in the countryside – alone.
My mother works in the city: it’s not easy for an unmarried foreign woman to
find a job here.
My parents’ separation during the Diaspora caused a scandal. My grandfather
traveled all the way from Afghanistan to support his divorced daughter and her
two young sons. The years of war, the loss of his eldest son, the time he’d spent in
prison, had turned my grandfather into a religious man.
As every day, he gets up before dawn to pray.
As every day, he wakes us boys up for school. He puts butter on our toast, then
ushers us to the door. But just as we’re about to leave the house, he says a few
words. A phrase in Arabic. A sentence we have to remember, to repeat again and
again until we know it by heart. Then he adds new words to those we already
know. The fragments add up, constituting a prayer.
And so we learnt, over the weeks, the Fatiha, Islam’s opening praise to the Lord:
“In the name of Allah, most merciful, most gracious God.”
Discreetly, he continued with the Islamic creed, the Muslim declaration of faith:
“There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
This is the Shahada.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
These are the earliest memories of my religious education. My grandfather has
passed away since. But my conception of Islam is still influenced by him, by the
loving way he shared his faith with us, the way he passed his traditions down to us.
And still I must agree with Ephraim Kishon, the Jewish satirist, who once said
that nothing is more difficult than being both enlightened and religious. Speaking
from personal experience, as a practicing Muslim brought up in tradition, life in
Germany was never easy.
I would lie if I said that Allah and TV – the sacred and the profane – have always
cohabited peacefully for me. I have discovered only in recent years that the
spiritual education I enjoyed as a child and as a teenager cannot be discarded. I
can therefore now commit to Islam without conflicting with myself.
My graduation film is my attempt at reconciling the contradictions of the two
cultures I grew up in. To see the German and the Islamic parts of me combine
on film.
This is the Shahada.

A FILM ABOUT PEOPLE
SHAHADA is not a film about religion. It was never meant to be didactic. I
didn’t want to take the viewer’s hand and tell him: “Islam works in this or that
way”.
Rather, I wanted to tell stories about people. People who are, of course, part
of a certain community. And casually, I approached the subject of their shared
religion and culture, as well as the internal conflicts and contradictions that
come with being Muslim in Germany.
I wanted to make a film about people in crisis, in extreme situations.
A father-daughter story; a story of guilt and atonement; a story about the value
of one’s own life; a story about sexual awakening:
Stories that each spectator – independent of their religious belief – can relate to
and think: “I know this. I have felt that way too once.”
It was important for me to explore how the environment, socialization and
religion affect the characters, in a good or bad direction.
To broaden my statement: SHAHADA is not a film about religion. But the
religious affiliation of the characters influences their actions and their decisions
in a very certain way. It is about the path they choose.
This is the Shahada.

© Alfred Steffen
BURHAN QURBANI
WRITER / DIRECTOR
8
BIOGRAPHY
On Christmas Eve, 1979, a day before the Red Army marched into Afghanistan,
Burhan Qurbani’s parents fled their home to seek political asylum in Germany.
Growing up, Burhan moved around Germany to follow his father, who worked
for the US Army.
After completing his high school diploma in 2000 in Stuttgart, he started
working in the theatre, first as a dramatist’s assistant, then as assistant director.
In 2002, he enrolled at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg to study film
directing.
Burhan’s short films have been selected by film festivals around the world and
won a number of prizes, including, in 2008, the German Camera Award and the
German Film Critics’ Award for ILLUSION. The same year he was honored
with the “Black Pearl” for “Best Newcomer of the Year” from the Middle East
International Film Festival.
SHAHADA, Burhan’s graduation project from the Akademie, is his first
feature-length film.
FILMOGRAPHY
2007 ILLUSION (Short Film)
2006 „Vögel ohne Beine“ (TV Series)
2005 STILL ON EARTH (Short Film)
2004 NUR WENN SIE SCHLAFEN (Short Film)
2003 HEART SHAPED BOX (Short Film)

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